


The Book I Write

by stereomer



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer





	The Book I Write

Kris is ten, standing in the music store and letting his eyes flick over all the shiny instruments. 

He spends his days watching his dad pluck at their old classical guitar, and listening to the tape that the church band had recorded a few months ago. It's practically worn out by now, but it's okay because Spring has rolled around and it's finally time for their music unit at school. Next year, he can join the junior high orchestra if he gets good enough. 

For weeks, all his classmates had been talking about which instruments they were going to play. There were the obvious choices, like violin, flute, percussion, trumpet. Kris doesn't really like being obvious, though. He doesn't even much like being noticed, so he's always the quiet one in class. Teachers like that. His classmates like that. He's pretty sure Mom and Dad like that too, since Daniel is always going crazy and jumping off couches and getting his head stuck in the bars of the staircase banister at home and stuff.

There's also the fact that he doesn't really want to be competing with forty other kids for violin solos. He'd said as much to his dad, who had laughed and told him, "I like the way you think."

In the end, he chooses the viola. The man who hands it to him describes it as, "Not treble clef, not bass clef, but right in the middle. You get the best of both worlds here." Kris likes the description. He also likes that middle-C on the alto clef is right smack dab on the middle staff line, which makes way more sense than the other clefs. 

"That sounds good," Kris says. He holds the instrument up for his mom to see. "Mom?"

"I'm not going to be the one playing it," she answers. They look at each other in silence, but she's kind of smiling and so Kris just nods again. She nods back. "All right. But I don't want to hear you complaining about not getting a violin a month from now," she warns Kris.

Kris scrunches his face up and replies, "Nah."

 

*

 

Kris is fifteen, on the cusp of sixteen. 

He spends his days working on guitar tabs, doodling cartoons in his Geometry notebook -- they always end up with awkwardly large hands -- and daydreaming about Katy while he's pretending to read  _Pride and Prejudice_  for Silent Reading. The two of them had started dating about a month ago; he still gets a kick out of holding her hand, because she smiles so nice every time he does it. Kissing her makes his palms sweat. He hasn't gotten much further than that, except for that one time on the couch at her house when they had been making out. Her shirt had ridden up, and Kris had belatedly realized that he'd splayed his hand on her lower back only when she pulled away and looked at him with bright eyes and her cheekbones blushed pink.

Underneath his bed, in between the stack of old  _Goosebumps_  books and a few used plates, there are wrinkled pages of staff paper, covered in small, penciled marks that map out a few songs he's written about Katy. They're mostly stupid, and they take an unnecessary amount of time because he still finds it easiest to read and write notes in alto clef before transposing them to other instruments. He's made several mental reminders to himself to stash the sheet music elsewhere before his mom finds them while she's vacuuming or something, but he keeps forgetting.

"Music and you, that's all I need," he says over the phone one night. 

"And your family," Katy says, her voice pitched low. He pictures her huddled beneath her comforter, the phone pressed close to her ear.

"And them," he concedes. 

"And your friends, and your guitar, and your viola," she continues. "And church, and singing. Actually, you need lots of things."

"You're making this whole 'romantic' thing hard for me, you know," Kris points out.

She laughs quietly. "I know."

"You know," Kris repeats. He smiles against the mouthpiece and listens to her laugh again.

 

*

 

Kris is eighteen, finishing up his first semester of college. 

He spends his days not going to class and passively letting himself fall further and further behind on schoolwork until it's way too late to even try to pass the class. At least it's out of his hands by then and he doesn't have to make the effort. Katy is -- somewhere, doing something, who knows. It's not like he has to keep reminding himself that they broke up, and did so for pretty much no other reasons than 'distance' and 'college'. He's not  _that_  out of it. But sometimes he's at a loss, because having to restructure his life according to unexpected changes just plain freaking sucks. Like, who's he gonna call every night at 10:00? What's he supposed to say when he shows up at a barbecue and everyone asks where Katy is? Where can he go on Saturdays, when the rest of his friends have gotten used to him being over at Katy's instead of on campus? 

They're trivial issues, he knows this. He's been looking through the pictures from Spain and Thailand a lot, trying to remind himself of what's out there, but all that just seems so far away from his life right now. Still, he tapes up the best pictures on the wall above his bed: the beaches in Phuket, the amazing churches in Madrid, playing soccer with the kids in Cape Town. Then he sits back on his heels and thinks about his parents having trouble with the mortgage, and Daniel getting bullied at school, and, of course, Katy.

His housemates had put low-set beach chairs on the lawn at the beginning of the year and Kris sits out there at night, staring at the weathervanes of houses across the street and the expansive backdrop of the sky behind them. It feels like he can think more clearly that way, even though he doesn't come away with many worthwhile thoughts. Mostly, he just likes how everything seems so intimidatingly  _big_  each time he sits in those chairs, like he still can't wrap his mind around the whole concept of there being a world beyond what he knows, and it surprises him again and again. 

Lately, he can't decide whether he wants to confine his life to this city or pack his crap up and move at least a thousand miles away. He can't decide if he wants to leave it all behind or try to re-mold what he already has. So he just sits, resting his head against the back of the chair and staring upward, feeling small and insignificant and wondering if he's okay with that.

 

*

 

Kris is twenty-two, and wants to sleep more than anything else in the world. 

He spends his days tooling around on his guitar and some crappy recording freeware on his computer, saving short clips of chord progressions that he doesn't want to forget. Most of the time, he doesn't go to bed until past 2:00am, 3:00am if he's playing a gig at Mojo's. Katy works and sleeps at normal hours, but she's also there at Mojo's every time he's playing, sitting at the back of the bar and sipping on a Corona if it's a weekday, a gin and tonic if it's a weekend. The drinks affect her more when she's had a hard week at work, and sometimes she's a little drunk by the time he finishes up. On those nights, he walks to the parking lot with his guitar weighing on one arm and his girl -- his wife -- on the other. Those are the times that he feels incredibly happy. Those are also the times that he feels incredibly frustrated, and angry, and sad. 

Occasionally, after Katy goes to bed, Kris goes to the UCA website and logs in, just to make sure he's still in the system. His student status is 'Continuing'; the transcript has his last semester marked as 'Incomplete'. After he first dropped out, he floundered for a bit before trying to plow his way in this new direction, even though a few months later it seemed like the whole music thing wasn't going anywhere. It's been long enough now that he  _knows_  it's not going anywhere. He's just walking toward the inevitable with a guitar strapped to his back. 

"What's the tipping point?" he asks Katy. 

Gravel is crunching underneath their feet. The rhythm of Katy's footsteps is more erratic than his own. She stumbles once or twice, and Kris stops each time to wait. Even so, she must be lucid enough to pick up on his tone, because she replies without asking for clarification: "It's up to you, babe."

"I hate that you let me be so independent," he tells her in a lighter voice. He turns his head and watches her hair swing freely, a few stray pieces sticking up from the crown of her head. Her eyes are hooded when she looks at him, mouth pulled in a lopsided smile that she insists she got from Kris, as if facial expressions are a contagious thing.

She leans close, tucking her face into his neck as they stop once more. "One more month," she whispers, just like she did the last time. Her breath is hot, and Kris shivers involuntarily.

"One more month," he agrees, wrapping his arm around her waist. Something pokes against the inside of his wrist and he realizes that it's Katy's work badge, clipped to one of her belt loops. She must have forgotten to take it off before coming here. 

He closes his eyes and hugs her tighter.

 

*

 

Kris just turned twenty-three a few days ago, and he gets a phone call from his brother. Something about the two of them and Mom's car and an impromptu road trip to some city not in Arkansas -- Kris isn't really listening, but he's been in the mood for a long drive ever since the weather started getting deep into summertime, and so he says, "Sure," without second thought.


End file.
